by Laura Tims
I barely hear his words. I’m scrubbing my lips repeatedly with my sleeve, so raw with fury and humiliation that I can’t string a sentence together.
Anthony hops to the floor, winks at Eliot, and leaves the gym.
Eliot just stands there staring at me.
I don’t want to hear whatever sarcastic comment he has cooking in his stupid brain because he can’t comprehend that now isn’t the time, and I don’t want his laser eyes on me when I’m already on fire.
“What?” I bite out. “Go!”
And he does.
I waste gallons of scalding water showering the disgustingness off. Even though I take forever, I still kind of expect him to be waiting in the hall when I come out.
But no one is there. And he doesn’t answer my apology text, or the second or third.
It’s not just that Anthony stole my first kiss. It’s that he did it in front of Eliot, which shouldn’t matter, except that it does.
My leg hurts, so I go to the nurse’s office and lie down until school is over and I have to call Lena for a ride home.
After school, I visit Mom’s grave.
I never got the point of going to a graveyard and talking to a rock, so I’ve come zero times since Mom’s funeral. It’s extra terrible, because the graveyard is down the block from our house, short enough for me to walk if I take half a Vicodin first.
Tito whines at my feet as I wrap my fingers around the gate. The sky is so blue. Every time I consider coming here, it ends up being a sunny day, and everyone knows you’re only supposed to go to a cemetery when it’s pouring rain.
Mom’s grave is partway down the third row, neighbors with a man who died in 1943. Not living next to her, but not dying next to her either. Just there.
Tito doesn’t curl up on her grave like a movie dog, but he does mush his tiny body against me, transferring whatever comfort he can to my ankle.
There’s fresh roses from Dad and a packet of Mom’s favorite sugar-free green tea gum from Rex. It doesn’t look like Lena’s been here, unless she’s the one who brought those dramatic white-and-pink flowers with the huge petals—but they’re not her style. There’s piles of them, the stems uneven, like someone cut them from their own garden.
“Hi, Mom,” I say to the stone. No answer. Leave a message. I need advice.
“Hello, shiny rock,” I correct myself. “From a quarry in Minnesota, according to the sales guy.”
Stupid, stupid. Across the graveyard, someone’s baby is crying. It feels rude to be so blatantly alive here.
“I met this guy,” I say to the stone.
I would achieve just as much informing the fence.
“He’s, um. Cool.” Digging deep into the emotions now. Dr. Brown would be proud.
Okay, if I’m doing this, I’m doing it.
“His name’s Eliot. He’s like . . . five inches taller than me? But I don’t know, I stand weird now. He’s super into personality types—or he used to be; he’s not into anything for more than a month. I think he’s into me now, actually, but we’re coming up on more than a month.”
The gravestone expresses little surprise at this.
“Oh, and he doesn’t feel pain. I guess Eliot and you have that in common.” I clear my throat. “Probably the nicest thing about being dead. Eliot figured it out while he’s still alive.”
I’m so glad she can’t hear me.
“I don’t know, like. What a crush is.” I clear my throat again. These dead people will think I have pneumonia and that I’ll be joining them soon. “He doesn’t like anyone else but me—he thinks everyone else is stupid. And that makes me feel special, and I’ve been sort of looking for a new way to feel special.”
Did you feel special when you met Dad?
Were you scared he’d get bored of you?
“This isn’t really helping, but I never talked to you about my problems when you were alive, so I don’t know if it would have been different. I mean, hopefully it would have.”
I want to ask Mom if she saw who hit us. It’s not fair that she left me with the responsibility of figuring it out. But asking questions is different from just talking—it makes it obvious that no one is going to answer you.
So I say something pointless instead.
“I got my first kiss today.”
And then I’m crying so suddenly I’m startled. My mouth opens, and the tears get inside. It’s stupid and I hate it and it makes Tito upset.
Even though it’s only four, I head home and go to bed.
Chapter Ten
ELIOT’S NOT AT SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY, SO I have to sit through lunch by myself. Then I have to sit through Social Studies by myself as everyone else pairs up to grade each other’s quizzes.
I watch them do it like they’re in another dimension. It’s so messed up to make us choose teams in gym, or partner up in class, just in case anyone was wondering who has no friends.
It wouldn’t kill you to text me back, I message him. If it would kill you, you should see someone about that.
I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.
I mean, something’s probably wrong. Eliot lives crisis to crisis. I bet his house was swallowed up by a giant crack in the ground.
I google that under my desk to find out if it’s something that actually happens, and it is, and it happened to a family in New Mexico.
If you don’t text me back in the next hour I’m going to assume you’ve been swallowed by a giant crack in the ground like that family from New Mexico, I text him.
What family from New Mexico?
I nearly knock over my crutches.
Why aren’t you in school? Are you mad at me
Come over, he finally responds.
I’m in the middle of class, I can’t just waltz out.
Buzz. Don’t waltz, then. Walk.
What’s the matter? My fingers are sweaty on the screen.
May be dying. Need you to deny or confirm. Don’t call 911.
He has to be joking, some bizarre prank to break the ice from yesterday.
You’re not serious right
Eliot???
Oh, God.
How do I get to your house I don’t have a car. Fuck fuck fuck
I leap out of my chair as much as I can leap and basically scream, “I have to go to the nurse’s office.”
Everyone looks up from their partner’s quiz to silently judge me.
Mr. Parish frowns. “Samantha, did you know you’ve excused yourself from class six times this semester?”
He had to choose number seven to be a dick about. “I really don’t feel good.”
“You look fine to me.”
Eliot better be drawing his last breath.
I lean over and fake retch like I’m going to puke. Someone says, “Ew.”
“Very well.” Mr. Parish sighs. “Would someone please escort—”
I’m out of the room before he can finish.
At the end of the hall, I stop. Am I going to walk all the way to Eliot’s?
If he said not to call 911, I should probably call 911.
But he also said he hates hospitals.
After an hour of walking in the abnormally hot April sun, I’m soaked with sweat. The Vicodin staves off the pain, but I’ll be feeling it tonight.
When I finally reach Eliot’s, I want to fall on his front porch and die. Instead I shoulder his door open, my hand so moist it slips on the knob.
“Eliot?” I wheeze.
The house is roasting, and all the windows are shut. Luckily Gabriel’s shoes aren’t by the front door.
Eliot isn’t in the living room, so I check the kitchen. The oven’s on, which explains why the house is a furnace. A limp bag of frozen french fries, which I bought him at the grocery store, is melting by the sink.
I’m about to search upstairs when I trip over his foot, sticking out from behind the kitchen counter.
“Eliot!” He’s lying in a heap on the floor, his phone inches from his hand. I�
��m hit with a wave of pain from my leg, and my chest splinters, but there’s no blood on the white tiles.
I kneel beside him, fumbling for my phone, and his crystal eyes flash open. “You got here fast.”
“You’re alive,” I croak.
“Not sure. I was hoping for a second opinion.”
He doesn’t lift his cheek from the tiles. He’s as pale as he was the night we went swimming, apart from the two red spots of color that burn in the hollows of his cheeks.
My heart is pounding. “How long have you been like this?”
“Five years. No, three. Ask someone who was paying attention.” His pinpointed pupils swing up toward my face. “You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot; I walked here.”
“Impossible. I texted you, and in a second you were in my kitchen.”
“I think you fainted,” I say, trying to stay calm.
He nods, his hair scraping against the floor. “That would explain the headache.”
I move two fingers along his temple to find a slight bump. He’s hotter than any human being should be. “Do you have a thermometer?”
“Yes, but it’s covered in substances I don’t want in or around my mouth. Or wherever you were planning to put it.”
“Then I’m taking you to the hospital, because I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
“I do, if it’s hot out,” he says. “Heat exhaustion. Happens every so often, nothing to worry about. I can’t sense heat any more than I sense cold. But I know the difference between heat exhaustion and heatstroke, and I only have to go to the hospital if it’s the latter.”
That definitely seems like something to worry about. But a girl on my lacrosse team almost passed out once during a summer practice, and I remember what the coach said to do.
I roll him onto his back. “Have you had any water lately?”
“Define lately.”
“Eliot, I’m calling an ambulance.”
He waves his other hand weakly. “I just wanted your professional opinion as to whether or not I was dying. You’re free to go.”
“I haven’t given it yet.” I fill a glass of water and mix equal parts salt and sugar in it to hydrate him faster, my fingers trembling. I can’t believe I was jealous of his condition. He’s lying on the floor.
“Well, hurry up,” he says. “You’d make an awful mortician.”
“I think,” I say, dragging him into a half-sitting position, “you need to go to the hospital.”
“If you take me there, I’ll die on purpose and haunt you.”
“Shut up and drink this.”
“Not unless you promise not to take me to the hospital.”
I have to physically stop myself from bashing my head into the refrigerator. “Are you five years old?”
“No hospital.”
“JESUS CHRIST, fine. Just drink. Slowly.”
Eliot achieves a smirk as he swallows, water spilling down his chin. His shoulder presses into my chest, so angular it hurts.
“Now up,” I tell him.
His legs shake as he hauls himself upright, gripping the countertop for support. He takes two steps and promptly throws up into the trash can.
“You said the water would help,” he says accusingly.
“I said to drink slowly!”
In the living room, he tosses himself facedown on the couch, and I have to make him turn over so he won’t suffocate. He always looks a little undead, but now even his lips are white. And I was jealous.
He deserves someone better than me.
To avoid meeting his eyes, I open every window in the house, place an ice pack on his forehead, and make him drink cold water until he’s a more normal color.
“Just rest, okay?” I say. “I’ll be right here.”
“You can go home.”
“I don’t have anywhere to be.” I perch on the edge of the couch. The sunlight trickling through the window is a lazy kind of bright.
“Does this happen a lot?” I whisper.
“Only when I’m distracted. I was pacing.” He’s drowsy, less Eliot-sharp.
“What were you distracted by?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes drift half closed.
“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” he murmurs.
The worst thing about crutches is how easy they are to knock over, and the other worst thing is how much noise they make crashing to the floor.
Eliot watches me scramble for them. “Before Anthony, I mean.”
“No,” I hiss. “And that one doesn’t count.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice is thin. “I was useless when he did that. You’ve been standing up for me, and I just . . .”
He trails off. Guilt isn’t prickly or sarcastic enough to be an Eliot emotion, and it’s new and shifting in his voice.
“Forget about it,” I say determinedly. “I’m sorry, too, if I ever acted like congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis was something to be jealous of.”
“It’s okay.” He’s almost completely asleep now. “It’s just . . . part of my life.”
“You’re not bitter about it?” I should let him sleep, but I’m leaning forward. “It’s not fair that it’s part of your life. It shouldn’t have to be.”
Rex pretends that my leg isn’t a part of my life, that I can do everything I did before. Lena acts like it’s my entire life. Dad is convinced that a miracle awaits me in physical therapy. But to say to myself It’s just a part of my life feels like defeat. It sucks, and I want to let it suck.
“There’s nothing to be done about it,” he says quietly. “It just is.”
There’s a long silence, and I’m starting to feel sleepy, too, but then his eyes fly open.
“Sam!”
I have a heart attack. “What?”
“You walked here.” He’s breathing hard. “All the way here. Are you okay?”
“I . . . yeah.” My heart plummets to my stomach. “Of course.”
“Good,” he murmurs.
Gradually he dozes off again, the rise and fall of his chest slowing, softening.
That was the weirdest part of Mom’s funeral, her chest not moving. I couldn’t remember ever paying particular attention to her chest moving, but it’s not something you notice, because it’s constantly happening. You only notice when it’s gone. That’s when the world turns dizzy and unsafe, when you lose something you had no interest in because it was always there.
Eliot’s chest goes down, and for a millisecond I’m completely convinced it won’t ever come up again, but then it does, and I’m hit with such raw relief that I almost cry.
I slide off the edge of the couch onto the cushion next to him and tilt sideways, letting my shoulder fall into his hip, my head into the curve of his waist.
Either he doesn’t wake up or he pretends not to. I listen to his heartbeat. An unbelievably frail, thready noise is all that’s keeping him alive.
I suddenly feel incredibly protective, like my heart is swelling to cover him. It’s the most intense emotion, and the saddest; but it’s a full kind of sad, so it’s okay.
Over the next few days, the shootout between Rex and Lena morphs into a cold war, with both sides employing couriers and spies. And since Dad is working overtime to avoid the situation, I’m everyone’s courier and everyone’s spy.
“Samantha, can you please tell Reginald that drinking straight from the juice carton shows disrespect for the other human beings with whom he shares a house?” Lena says over Girls’ Breakfast, a new thing before school where she gives me a flaxseed smoothie and teaches me about feminism. “There are glasses in the cupboard.”
After deciding I’m more afraid of Lena, I go upstairs to Rex’s room and deliver the message.
He throws his covers off his head and snaps, “Can you please tell Lena that if she has a fucking problem with the way I drink my fucking orange juice, she’s welcome to go fuck herself?”
“I’ll tell her that when I want to die.”
&
nbsp; He squints at me, then sighs. “Fair enough.”
I linger in the doorway. “Couldn’t you at least try—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No,” he says. “She’s never tried.”
“All she does is try.”
“She tries to be my overlord, my—my mom. Give me a call if she ever decides to try to be my goddamn sister.”
He rolls over until he’s not facing me anymore.
“Can’t you at least try?” I ask Lena later in the kitchen. She’s teaching me how to cook a vegan casserole, because taking on traditional feminine responsibilities isn’t antifeminist if you do it by choice, apparently. I don’t point out that she didn’t give me a choice.
“He needs tough love.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a streak of tomato paste that makes her look like she has a head injury. “Mom never told him what he has to hear, so now it’s my job.”
I stir the pasty vegetable glop. “Don’t you think maybe you’re hurting his feelings?”
For a second she looks so shell-shocked that the head injury seems more realistic. “Not that I’m on his side,” I say quickly.
“I know that Rex is sensitive. . . .” She washes her spoon, her expression lost, but then she shakes her head. “But I’d rather hurt his feelings than his future. I’m putting my future on hold because I’m the only one who’s willing to push him hard enough to do anything with his. I refuse to let him be the waste of space he thinks he is.”
“It’s Rex. He’d probably throw away his future just to annoy you.”
She laughs, and her anxiety lines disappear, and for a second she looks like Mom again. “Which goes to show that he can achieve whatever he sets his mind to. And so can you. A lot of colleges are still accepting applications for spring enrollment, Samantha.”
I stir harder. “I have to repeat next fall semester because I missed so much school, remember? I told you I’m probably going to take spring off.”
“Then you have to do something with your time. You’re a valuable person, and it’d be a shame to waste it. You can’t just sit around being sad—you, Dad, Reginald, all of you stagnate.” She makes a frustrated sound. “The best way to move on is to move, Samantha.”
